


after the world ends

by desastrista



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Stilt Man Cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21713620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desastrista/pseuds/desastrista
Summary: Jessica is used to pushing people away. The Blip pushes them further.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 34
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	after the world ends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenWithABeeThrone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/gifts).



> This is a Yuletide gift for @QueenWithABeeThrone, who requested Defenders fic where Jessica is the only one who survives the Snap. (Also, Stilt-man.) Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to work in a lot of the non-Jessica POV requested. Also, while I included Trish, I wanted to write things at a point when everyone was still in New York, so there’s a bit of a chronological retcon and the Snap now occurs roughly at the end of the first (and, short of major change by Disney, only?) season of the Defenders. That means the relationship with Trish is significantly less fraught than in later seasons of Jessica Jones. I hope you still enjoy it, @QueenWithABeeThrone. I had a lot of fun writing it.

Matt had chosen the bar. A dimly lit place that served strong drinks without asking many questions, it normally would have gotten Jessica's seal of approval. But at the moment the ambience was completely ruined by the fact that Matt was there and talking. 

“I ran into the guy yesterday. He was wearing some kind of metal contraption, complete with hydraulic legs. I didn't even know the technology existed --" 

“Hydraulic legs,” Jessica repeated, because Matt had breezed right past that phrase as if it was a perfectly normal thing to drop in conversations. “You mean, powered by water --?" 

“They were telescopic,” Matt said, as if that explained things.

Jessica sighed. "Can you explain it for those of us who didn't go to law school?" 

"His legs get really long. You know, telescopic doesn't often come up in law school --" 

Jessica rolled her eyes. Not that Matt could see that. "Seriously?" 

"Actually, yes."

"I was talking about the metal legs, Matt. You called me over here because you're scared of some guy on metal stilts?"

"Oh. Well, I know it sounds crazy." Matt could say that all he liked, but Jessica wasn't quite sure he knew _just_ how crazy he sounded. She chugged the last of her beer. "He used them to scale an entire brownstone. I could hear three floors worth of people, so I know it was at least three stories. Might have been taller. I had to find an alley to cut through, and by the time I got to the next block, he'd vanished." 

"You're shitting me," Jessica muttered under her breath. She regretted finishing her beer before Matt's story, and tried tipping the glass further to coax out those last drops.

Matt was staring at her intensely. Jessica tried to ignore him. 

She was so very tired of trying to ignore all the shit in this city.

“Ok," she sighed. "So you saw some jackass who can jump real high. What does that have to do with me?” 

“Believe me, going to you was not my first choice.” Jessica gave a wry smile. Funny. That made two of them. “But I can't catch him on my own. And even if I was to ask Luke or Danny for help, we would still need someone who can keep up with him. And that would require someone who is just as adept as him at scaling buildings."

“You know, maybe you want to bring the gang back together again, but New York has cops. Let them handle this." 

"Unless you know something about the cops in this city that I don't, none of them are clearing buildings in a single leap."

Jessica set down her glass with a heavy thud. It was empty. She did not want to sit around and nurse a second. "That's their problem," she shrugged. "Not mine."

“Until this man is stopped, he’s New York’s problem.” 

“Then let the rest of New York handle him,” Jessica snapped. She watched Matt frown. It wasn’t exactly a look of disappointment; more of confusion, like Jessica was a puzzle he was slowly trying to piece together.

She hated that look.

“Did you retire or something?" he asked.

“So long as that’s a polite euphemism for ‘being fed up with this bullshit’, then the answer is yes.” 

Matt raised an eyebrow. “Saving the city hardly seems like bullshit.” 

“What else would you call a job with no end in sight?” Jessica countered. She shook her head. “I have fought some truly messed up people. You had a building dropped on you. And what do we get? A chance to rest? No. We have some bullshit mad scientist type with crazy legs to track down. Where does it end? When do we get to say we’ve won?” 

Matt was quiet for a moment. "Maybe it's not about winning."

Jessica stood up to go. “Well, I’m sick of losing. You’re on your own with this one.” 

And for a few days, that was it. She spent the next few days in her apartment or working odd jobs. Occasionally, she would see a newspaper crumbled up on the street, with some headlines about some big theft. She ignored it. There were too many superheroes in New York these days; Arachnid Boy or whatever his name was was surely working this case. 

And then one day, without any warning, grand larceny was the last thing on anyone's mind. 

They called it "the Blip" because it happened in an instant. Planes crashed as pilots vanished. People disappeared in the street. One minute they were laughing, or talking, or arguing. And the next minute they were gone.

Jessica slept through the whole thing. 

She woke up to a world in chaos. People were screaming. Every TV in every apartment or bar was tuned in to the news, as if the people on screen had any answers -- as if some news anchors hadn't disappeared mid-report. 

Jessica lurched through the halls. Almost every one ignored her, although a few people turned and asked her if she knew what had happened. Was it terrorism? An act of God? She just shook her head, repeating, "I don't know" half to herself.

Finally she found a quiet enough corner in her apartment complex and dialed Trish. 

Three rings and then voicemail. Jessica swore and hung up her phone. After a minute, she called again. 

"Please, Trish, just answer," Jessica muttered under her breath. 

Three rings again. The beep of voicemail. 

"Trish, this is Jessica. Call me back." She hung up the phone with so much force that she almost smashed her screen. 

Jessica stood in the middle of the hall, her heart pounding. She felt very suddenly very alone. 

After the initial panic, she left to look for Malcolm. She found him in the middle of a neighborhood huddle, discussing whether or not they should evacuate or where they should go. Relief courses through her at the site of him. 

"I'm not sure anywhere is safe," a neighbor pointed out. 

"This is Jessica," Malcolm said with a smile. "She might know how to help." 

Jessica really wished he hadn't said that. A lot of people were looking at her expectantly. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't know any more than you." 

The disappointment in the crowd was palpable. Still, Malcolm appeared undeterred. "At least whatever it was, it seems to have stopped. We're probably safe for now." Maybe he saw Jessica eyeing the exits, because he added, "Whatever happens now, we could really use a hero." 

She started to shoulder her way through to the stairs. "Yeah, we really could." 

Jessica joined the confused throng of people aimlessly wandering the streets. It could have been a scene from a zombie movie, the way everyone shuffled listlessly outside. 

Except in a zombie movie, they usually knew what caused the end of the world. 

A crowd had gathered at a sports bar. Every single screen in the place was set to the news. A list of faces was flashing by under the headline "Confirmed Disappeared." 

Jessica didn't want to watch, but dread rooted her to the spot. She wasn't even sure whose face she was most afraid to see. 

A few faces flashed. No one that she knew. Then her stomach gave a lurch at some familiar golden curls. Danny was gone. 

Whatever happened, neither money nor mystic spirits seemed to offer any defense. 

Jessica reached for her phone. She dialed Luke half by instinct. She wasn't quite sure what she would say to him if he answered, but it didn't matter. Voicemail. 

The last number she tried before heading home was Matt's. She hung up after the third ring. She was getting sick of hearing voicemail.

The next morning when Jessica woke up, she half hoped the day before had been a dream. A quick internet search corrected that idea.

The Blip was all anyone could talk about. There was still no official word on what had happened, just a few statements urging people not to panic. No doubt it was hard to draft a proper response when half the civil service had vanished. 

Only the tally was known. Half the human population, vanished in an instant. 

It was difficult for Jessica to care about three and a half billion people. So she started with the far, far fewer number of people she knew and cared about. 

She went by Trish's apartment first. The lights were off, and it looked like no one had been home for a while. Jessica hung around longer than she needed to before heading north to Harlem. It didn't take a lot of asking around before she discovered someone who had seen Luke disappear into thin air.

"I didn't think anything could hurt him," the boy -- he could not have been older than thirteen -- lamented. Jessica didn't say anything, but the kid was right. Evidently being bulletproof wasn't the same as being Apocalypse-proof. 

New York was down two heroes. Jessica took the train to Hell's Kitchen fearing the worst.

Matt's apartment and law firm both looked abandoned, but when Jessica asked the neighbors, that appeared to have been the case for a while. Running out of leads, Jessica finally started looking online for reports about the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Those seemed more recent. 

"Workaholic," Jessica muttered, even as she followed what the Internet said was Matt's footsteps. Most of the leads she asked did not have much of anything to say, but it still felt oddly reassuring to hit the road. 

As night approached, Jessica was forced to admit that all evidence pointed to Matt disappearing with the rest of them. 

The vigilante population of New York had dwindled perilously. It didn't seem fair. Jessica was used to being dragged kicking and screaming into anything approaching heroics. Whose bad idea of a joke would allow her to survive when all the other people who might actually have wanted to help in a crisis vanished? Bullshit. She needed answers. Real answers.

At least she took some small amount of joy in one discovery that she had made while wandering the docks. Matt had been spotted there a week ago, but there had been no signs of him since. Still, in an empty shipping container, Jessica had discovered a table strewn with discarded papers and an abandoned metal suit. 

"Son of a bitch really did have telescope legs," she muttered to herself as she poked around. The table had a map of Chelsea, the schematics for a bank, and time tables that looked like security rotations. They were dated for the day before.

The Blip, it seemed, wasn't a half bad crime fighter itself. 

Jessica spent the next day at her laptop, pouring over government records. There was (still) no official story for what had happened, only a few vague statements to the effect that a powerful alien force had come to Earth, thwarted Earth's mightiest heroes, presumably committed genocide, and then vanished.

That was the story the government meant to be "reassuring". 

But there were some more details available online, if you knew where to look and weren't afraid of maybe running afoul of a federal law or two. Armed with that knowledge, Jessica took a bus upstate first thing the next morning. And then a bit of a walk, plus a drive in a hot-wired car. (It was fine, the owner had probably vanished. Probably. Jessica didn't stop to worry too much about the ethics of the situation.) 

After all, was it her fault that the Avengers chose to build their secret base so far from public transit?

They should have thought of the planet. Or what was left of it, anyway.

It took half a day but she finally reached the Avengers compound. At first glance, it seemed to be a monument to the beauty and splendor of airport hangers. Jessica gave it a puzzled stare for half a moment before beginning the long trek to the gates. 

There were almost certainly cameras tracking her every motion. Jessica could see a few. Drones too, probably. Probably enough money had been pored into the surveillance of this area to pay her New York City rent for at least a month or two. But nothing on land or in the air moved to stop her. 

Jessica reached the gates, gave them a good shake. "Hey assholes," she called out. "Open up."

Nothing happened. Jessica waited a minute and then shook the metal bars once more.

"I know you're in here." 

Absolute silence greeted her. 

Jessica rolled her eyes. She didn't have time for this. All it took was one half step back and then she had cleared the fence.

A sudden series of alarms let Jessica know she had finally caught the Avengers' attention.

A woman with light blonde hair was waiting outside when Jessica finally reached the doors. The hair color was unexpected, but Jessica had done enough research into leaked SHIELD files to feel confident that this was the Black Widow. As for the brick wall of a man standing next to her, Jessica didn't need any secret agency to tell her who that was. Any kid in the country could tell you about Captain America. 

From the suspicious scowls that greeted her, it seemed her own reputation had not preceded her. 

"Identify yourself," Natasha said. 

"The name's Jessica Jones. I'm a P.I. from New York. And I've got some questions for you two about the end of the world."

From the knowing look the two Avengers shared, Jessica knew she was finally on the right path to getting some answers.

"It's not exactly a secret," Captain America himself started to explain as they let her inside. "We're just still trying to figure out a way to tell people without causing a panic." 

"More panic than half the population disappearing into dust without knowing why?" Jessica shot back. 

"Believe me, we know how it sounds." Black Widow answered bracingly as they entered what appeared to be the main conference room for the building. "But here's the alternative: a mad space titan is out there with the power to remake all of reality and we have no idea what he wants or how to stop him." 

Jessica stopped walking. That did, in fact, sound much worse. 

Then she saw the middle table helpfully light up with an image of who she could only imagine was the responsible party. Her nose wrinkled. Definitely alien, definitely all chin. "Seriously, this guy?"

"This guy," Captain America agreed bitterly.

He spent the next few minutes telling the story from the beginning before concluding, arms crossed, "He's vanished. We have no idea where he went. And even if we did know, if it's off-planet, we have no way to get there. We don't have the technology to even begin to try." 

"But -- we have to find him," Jessica said weakly. She thought of all the empty apartments she had seen in the past few days, all the phone calls that never got picked up. Was that really just how it was going to be now?

They were the Avengers. They had to be able to do _something._

"We're all ears if you know where to find him," Black Widow said, with a savage sincerity that made it clear she already knew exactly how much help Jessica could provide on that question.

"Or if you know how to stop him," Captain America added. "He's even stronger than he was before, and our biggest guns couldn't even stop him then." 

"I've got super strength," she said, before remembering who she was talking to.

"A lot of us did," he shrugged. "It didn't help." 

Jessica felt at the moment very small and powerless, a sensation that was both unfamiliar and too familiar and one she didn't like at all. 

"So, that's your solution? Sit around, wait for whatever it is that Thanos decides to do next?" Jessica snapped. Maybe it wasn't a fair thing to say, but it felt good to get angry. It kept the hopelessness of the situation at bay.

Neither Avenger flinched at the outburst. "We're going to do anything we can," Black Widow said evenly. "I'd advise you to do the same."

And that, it seemed, was all there was to say.

It was a somber -- and slow -- bus ride back to the bus. Jessica knew when she was approaching civilization when her phone finally got service again and started buzzing with a whole host of missed messages. At first, Jessica just ignored it. Then, boredom got the better of her, and she checked her phone. 

Her heart stopped. 

Trish had called her. Twice. 

Jessica redialed so fast it probably could have been counted as among her superpowers. Ever the pessimist, her mind raced with all the ways this could disappoint her. Maybe someone had just stolen Trish's phone. Maybe someone was prank calling her. Maybe the universe itself was prank calling her.

"Jessica?" A familiar and _very_ confused voice asked on the other end of the line. Jessica drew a shaky sigh of relief. 

"Jessica, where are you?" Trish continued. "I've been calling --"

"Where have _I_ been? Trish, I've been trying to get a hold of you since the Blip." Jessica could hear her voice breaking. "I thought you were --" Words had never been Jessica's specialty, and now they were failing her completely.

"I was out of the country when it happened," Trish explained. "I just got back this morning. It was a nightmare trying to travel. You can just imagine, all the planes that were in the air, and half of all flight crews worldwide just vanishing --" 

Jessica had seen some reports of similar stories on the news. She hadn't given them much thought, figuring nothing like that would happen to anyone she knew. It had just seemed inevitable that the Blip had taken everyone from her.

"But you're safe now," Jessica said, still half trying to convince herself this was real. "You're back and you're safe." 

"Yeah," Trish replied, glibly unaware of how welcome a miracle that fact was. "Where are you?" 

Jessica looked out the window to the rolling hills of upstate New York. She was still a long way from home. "It's a long story. I went to see the Avengers and got some answers about the Blip, but honestly they were kinda pricks about it." 

Trish laughed and Jessica thought it was the greatest noise she had heard in a long time.

"I'll be at your place when I'm back," Jessica promised. 

Jessica didn't bother stopping back at her own place but just went straight to see Trish. Her friend opened the door looking harried but otherwise alive and well, and before either of them really realized it Jessica had wrapped her arms tight around Trish in a protective hug. 

"Are you alright?" Trish asked, even as she leaned in closer. "Did anything happen?"

"Too much happened," Jessica laughed bitterly. "Tell me where you've been first."

They say down on the sofa as Trish started to explain. She had been in South America last week shooting a special for her show. The day before she was supposed to leave, the Blip happened and all flights were grounded. It took days for her to get home.

"It took months for me to convince my producers to let me go. I was so excited, figured it might finally be my big break," she laughed ruefully. "And this morning I was just told that all production has stopped because half the company is gone, and I have never been happier just to be home." 

Jessica rested her head on Trish's shoulder. "Yeah, me too," she said, half to herself. The words didn't seem enough for the situation, but from the way Trish squeezed her hand, Jessica was sure she understood. 

"Now it's your turn," Trish nudged. "Tell me everything."

"I'm not sure what there is to say. I went looking for answers, and I found them." Jessica explained what the Avengers had told her to a shocked and then horrified Trish. "I guess I just thought -- if I knew what happened, I would know what I was supposed to do next. But there is no next step. There is no fixing this."

Jessica thought back to that last conversation with Matt. She'd wondered when they would be able to say they'd won; she'd never imagined that just around the corner there could be such a decisive defeat. 

Trish looked contemplative. "Maybe this isn't about fixing things. Maybe it's just about finding a way to move forward." 

"New York can find a way forward. But not with me." 

"Yeah, I'm sure that lunatic in a red leotard is going to provide great leadership." Trish had started to smile but stopped when she saw Jessica's expression. 

"He's gone." 

"What about --" Trish started but Jessica shook her head. 

"New York is running low on superheroes these days." Jessica tried to pass it off as a joke, but instead it came out half-strangled. 

Trish gave her a pointed look. "Not that low. Not yet."

It had been Trish's idea for Jessica to go "on patrol". Jessica had agreed only reluctantly, and had been adamant that under no condition would she wear a costume. 

Now, as night settled down on a gutted city, Jessica drew her coat tighter towards her and started walking. "On patrol" seemed like a fancy way to say "wandering aimlessly at night". She'd done that plenty of times while drunk and depressed; it did not feel particularly heroic. 

About an hour and a half into the night -- just around when Jessica was wondering if the bar she knew a few blocks away had survived the Blip -- she heard the sound of a struggle. Stepping into an alley, she saw two men locked in a tug of war over a leather purse.

"Hey, asshole," Jessica shouted out vaguely, hoping one party would at least have a guilty conscience about the matter. "Leave the purse alone." 

The larger of the men did let go of the purse and turn towards her. "And if I don't?" 

Jessica responded by lifting up the dumpster next to her. With one hand. As far as answers went, it must have been pretty compelling, because the man took off running in the other direction. 

Now there was just Jessica alone with a man busying himself adjusting his newly returned bag. Jessica wondered if she should say anything. The Avengers probably knew what to say in situations like this. She really hoped this guy didn't want to -- horror of horrors -- discuss his feelings or anything.

"Do I know you?" He asked instead, one eyebrow raised. 

"I hope not." 

The man walked off muttering something about muggers but without saying another word. Jessica smiled to herself. There were some things about New York even the Apocalypse couldn't change. 

She could get used to this. 

Jessica went on patrol the next day, and the day after. The more she did it, the easier it seemed to get. The days turned into weeks, weeks into months, until five years had passed.

And then the end of the world was undone. 

Jessica was cutting across Times Square -- a much more manageable task since the Blip had wiped out almost all tourism -- when suddenly the area was filled with people taking photos and hawking overpriced merchandise. In the jubilant chaos that followed, it was clear who had stayed and who had disappeared by whether they were overjoyed and confused or just confused. It took Jessica fifteen minutes to extract herself from the crowd.

Trish was the first to call. "Did you do this?"

"No," Jessica laughed. "Probably the Avengers. Maybe I should take back what I said about them."

"I mean, took them long enough. Some criticism is warranted."

When they got off the phone, Jessica took a moment to look around. There were so many people! A truly insane number of people! Had she really been used to this many people around her? 

Still, it didn't take long for her to realize who she wanted to see first. 

Matt opened the door to his apartment looking very disheveled. "Jessica," he hissed before she could say anything, and Jessica found both that she had missed that quirk of his and also that she absolutely did not want to know how he did it, "This isn't a good time. The electric company has shut off my power --"

"Yeah," Jessica agreed as she saw herself in. "They'll do that after five years of not paying your bills."

Matt had gone very still. "What do you mean?" 

"You probably realized that nothing in your fridge went bad. You can thank me for that later. It's not like you were using any of those groceries. Has your weird ESP let you know that you'll be needing a new security system?" 

Jessica watched Matt's expression morph from surprise to resignation, so she guessed the answer was yes. A better (or maybe just less broke) person would offer to replace it. She said, "In my defense, I really did not think you would ever need it again." 

"But you just got here." There was a rough quality to Matt's voice. Some emotions, badly concealed, trying to get out. Possibly a lot of emotions. Jessica knew from experience. 

"Like I said, five years," she said softly. "You're in for quite the story."

Matt listened quietly, holding his head in his hands. Jessica expected some kind of denial or outburst. If their roles had been reversed and Matt had had to explain to her that she had vanished for five years, _she_ certainly wouldn’t have just accepted it. But then he muttered to himself something about how that explained why the dust smelled the way it did, and she just accepted that Devil Boy had his own way of knowing things. 

“I can’t believe I’ve been gone so long. And I was getting so close to Wilbur Day, too.” 

“Is that -- is that a real name?” Jessica had no idea where Matt had been, existentially speaking, for the past five years. Maybe it was the equivalent of a very bad bump on the head. 

“He’s the man I was telling you about. The one with the telescop -- with the very long legs.” Matt looked morose. “I’m sure he’s had the chance to do plenty of damage these last few years.” 

A very distant memory nagged at Jessica. “I think I actually ran into him. A long time ago. Or what was left of him. He vanished too.” 

“At the docks, right?” Matt asked. It was clearly much fresher in his mind than it was in hers. 

“Matt, you’ve been gone five years. You can take a day or two before you jump back into things.” 

Matt’s expression was uncompromising. “If I don’t stop him, who will?” 

“I’ve been handling things fine by myself,” Jessica muttered defensively. 

That seemed to surprise Matt almost as much as the fact of his own disappearance. Jessica fought the urge to roll her eyes. “What happened to _I’m getting tired of losing_?” he asked. 

She shrugged. “I found out what losing really was, and I definitely didn’t like it.” Something like understanding crossed Matt’s face. 

“So, let’s not lose. Will you help me stop Day? If I’m back, so is he.” 

Jessica suppressed a smile. So much for basking in the end of the end of the world. If there was a job to do, Matt was apparently going to see it done. That didn’t bother Jessica as much as it used to. 

“On one condition,” she said. “There’s a few other people I’d like to see too.” 

It took several phone calls and about an hour, but Luke and Danny both made their way to Matt’s apartment. 

“Is it true what they’re saying, about half the world vanishing?” Danny asked, his eyes flickering between Matt and Jessica, looking for guidance. He seemed unnerved by the whole experience. Jessica couldn’t blame him. It was nice to have someone in the group admit to it. 

Luke, on the other hand, just gave her a knowing look. “ _Something_ must have happened,” he said. “Otherwise, there’s no reason you’d be so happy to see us.” 

Jessica laughed despite herself. Maybe Luke was on to something. “I do have a lot to catch you two up on. But before I can do that, there’s a madman with stilt legs who was planning to rob a bank five years ago, and he might try to do it tonight, so we’ve got to stop him. And, before you ask, that’s definitely not going to be the craziest thing I tell you tonight.” 

“Time to be heroes,” Matt said. 

Jessica liked the sound of that.


End file.
